On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 11:23 AM, Mary Lewis wrote: "Hi mum, I'm not feeling well today. I came home early from the office and I got into bed" On Sat, Jan 7, 2017 at 15:23 PM, Lucy James wrote: "Sorry to hear that. Stay in bed and don't move for a few days"
In 2017 most Internet traffic used to be people to people communications, Whatsapp messages, Facebook posts, YouTube views, emails, tweets and so on. Basically text, pictures, audios and videos. Even though Internet traffic generated by humans has been doubled every few years as of today this amount is insignificant compared to the traffic generated and consumed by non human sources.
As of today, 7th of January 2027, 99.99999999999999% of Internet trafic is generated and received by non humans. Machines talking to machines. Things talking to things.
What do you mean things talking to things?
What do things have to say?
What do things talk about?
Most of these “things” are sensors retrieving detailed information about their surroundings. From basic video and audio to a bit more sophisticated like weather conditions, movement, weight, preasure or heart rate all the way to continuous blood or glucose tests.
Billions of these “things” are “talking” to each other every second in areas like agriculture, farming, manufacturing, logistics or health.
Conversations between “things” nowadays are as ubiquitous as invisible. A few trillions of these conversations have taken place in the time you took to read this last sentence. Your shoe talked to the door, your car to the garage, your palm tree to your hose, your body to your heater, your toothbrush to the farmacy and your fridge to Amazon.
For “IoT native” people concepts like losing or forgeting something are alien to them. Since everything is traced nothing can get lost (or stolen). When they go home, they go to a concert or they catch a plane they never think about keys, tickets or passports. They are their own IDs. The door in your house knows who you are and unlocks the door for you. The same goes for any other door in the world.
Non “IoT native” people are always looking for switchs to turn the lights on and off. The light “didn’t follow them” when they were young.
Driving, queues, traffic jams are some other concepts that are alien to “IoT natives”. They don’t know what a scale is. Chairs, beds and shoes are doing that for them.
It’s hard to imagine how was life before IoT. There is a clear before and after IoT in human civilization.
Among the thousands of improvements that IoT brought to our lives my favourite one is Dating. There is no more guessing, no more ¿Does he/she love me?, no more disappointments. It’s all data now.
Somehow it feels like old Indian tradition where your parents used to choose the right partner for you, with the only difference that now it’s “the system” who chooses the right partner for you.
And now it is always the right one.
And for you, what is the best improvement IoT brought to your life?